The front tires of the truck came up off the ground as the nose lurched skyward, and suddenly Py felt the load shift radically backward. He heard Walt yell as the bales avalanched off the back of the bed and, hearing that, Py depressed the clutch once again. The truck immediately rolled backwards down the terrace. Py realized what was happening and hit the brake, but the abrupt stop only added to the momentum of the load, which now crashed with a tremendous rush of energy off the back of the truck. Horrified, Py looked in the side mirror, hoping to see Walt, but Walt wasn't in view. "Walt!" cried Py. "Walt! Are you okay?" But he heard nothing. Py pulled the lever to set the emergency brake and then killed the engine. He opened the door and jumped out of the cab, tumbling to the ground as he landed on the side of the terrace, looking toward the back of the truck even as he rolled. It was a disaster, one hundred pound bales strewn randomly behind the truck, some crushed up underneath the angled bed, having lodged there when the truck slipped backward.
"Walt! Walt!" Py jumped up off the ground and hurried to the back of the truck. "Walt!" But Walt was nowhere to be seen and Py immediately realized that he was somewhere beneath the mountain of hard- packed hay. He began picking up bales, tossing them aside, looking for Walt, but without success. Then he saw a boot, a glimpse of blue jean, and he frantically un-piled other bales to get to his fallen friend.
Walt was crushed beneath the load, his skin torn, ripped to raw bleeding wounds by the sharp edges of the straw. His eyes were wide open, but lifeless as he stared up at Py from between the blood- soaked hay, his neck swollen and already turning blue from the fracture of his spine.
CHAPTER 2 – A Poor Bastard’s Dignity
"He's dead all right."
Frank Walker shot a hot glance over at Jarvis Lang, his foreman, who was kneeling over Walt Vrbas' broken body. "Will somebody cover him up," said Walker in his gravel voice, and one of the ambulance crew moved quickly to do just that. He was talking to a sheriff's deputy who had arrived on the scene about the same time the ambulance crew showed up. Walker and the cowboys were already there when the emergency services arrived, all too late to do anything for poor Walt, who was still staring lifelessly into space. "And close that man's eyes," grumbled Walker. "Let's let him have a little dignity, poor bastard."
Jarvis Lang lingered for a moment, eyes fixed on the face of the corpse, apparently mesmerized at seeing death up so close. An ambulance attendant tapped him on the shoulder so that Jarvis would move aside and let him in next to the body, still packed in among the fallen bales. The attendant nonchalantly closed Walt's eyelids and then arranged a white sheet over him.
"Who was here when it happened?" asked the deputy, and Walker gestured with a head toss toward Py. "He was driving," he said.
Py was sweat-soaked and shaken, his heart still pounding madly. Seeing the way Walt lay twisted among the bales, being fearful of moving him, he had immediately set out on a dead run for a farmhouse that was visible in the distance, maybe a mile away. He had thought Walt was already dead, but he hadn't dared to stop running. When he arrived at the farmhouse he found a wife there with her kids and he had her call an ambulance and then Frank Walker, and while she set out for the home of a neighbor, who had a phone, Py started on a dead run back to the field where the broken man lay. But it was all too late. He sat there beside Walt, waiting for help to arrive, but it was nearly twenty minutes before anyone got there.
"So how did it happen?" the deputy asked Py, but Py could hardly find the words to speak. "He...I...started up the terrace... Truck jumped ...load shifted..."
"Shit," Jarvis Lang said, sending a stream of tobacco spit shooting out between his front teeth. Py looked at him, hearing the indictment in his voice, and then realized it wasn't only Jarvis who regarded him contemptuously. The other cowboys stood around looking at him too, each wearing the same condemning look. Even Frank Walker. They all looked at him like Walt's lying there dead was all his fault. It was a lynching sort of look. The cowboys didn't much tolerate a guy whose incompetence could get another of them killed. Now it didn't seem to matter that Walt was never one of their kind. Now it was all just judgment and blame. Py hadn't honored the code. He hadn't looked out for the other guy.
"We found this under the seat." One of Walker's cowboys held up a half-empty fifth of whiskey. He handed it to the deputy, who looked closely at it and then leaned forward to sniff at Py. He couldn't smell anything on his breath. Then he went over to where Walt lay, pulled back the sheet, and stuck his nose up close to the dead man's face. Again, nothing.
"Look, we're gonna need to get a more complete statement from you," the deputy said to Py, the tone of his voice comfortably non-judgmental. "I want you to come to the office tomorrow morning, where you can talk to the sheriff." Py nodded that he could. "Do not leave town," said the deputy, who then stepped back to let the attendants pass as they carried Walt's body to the ambulance. Py and the deputy watched silently as the stretcher was shoved into the back of the van and the doors were shut for the ride to the morgue. "If you do leave town you'll be considered a fugitive from the law," the deputy said, a little vacantly. Then refocused – "You'll be a fugitive from justice, and you don't want that. So I'll see you in the morning, okay?"
Py gave a blank acknowledgment to the deputy then watched as the ambulance drove slowly away from the scene and toward the edge of the field, two small clouds of dust trailing off the back tires as it went.
Frank Walker walked over to Py and pressed his pock-marked face right up against Py's blood-drained visage. "I want you off my property," he said in a low, threatening voice. "Get your things and get out. You’re fired."
CHAPTER 3 – Homeless
The odor emanating from the meat packing plant wafted through town in a noxious wave that turned Py's already sour stomach against him. The morning's round of police questioning had been tough enough: the review of yesterday's disaster, the incriminations, the admonition to stay put here in stinking Longmont in case charges were to be filed against him. There was talk of manslaughter, murder by negligence, murder by inability to work a clutch. Hell, Py didn't even think that would stick, and he didn't think the police were serious either. It was that damned Walker. He didn't even like Walt, but now he was raising a stink, talking like it was Py's recklessness that led to Walt's death. He was trying to use that whiskey bottle as proof that Py had been negligent, trying to say he'd been drinking on the job. Py wouldn't have tried to fool anybody with his understanding of the law, but this whole thing seemed to him like Walker's way of deflecting his own responsibility for what happened – for firing Jake, who should have been driving that truck, and for putting Py's redoubtable self behind the wheel. The irony that it was Jake's bottle – that he was the one who was always drinking on the job – was lost in the search for truth. Py tried not to worry, to tell himself that it would all pass. No doubt Walker would soon enough grow tired of harassing him and would figure that his own slate was clean. He was just an honest rancher, hiring as best he could from the available rabble. Some of them just weren't too smart, that was the thing. Some of them had to be watched every minute or they'd back a truck right over a guy.
Py looked both ways up and down Main Street. There wasn't much downtown activity. A few cars sat out in front of the Ben Franklin Five and Dime. Pickups lined the parking spaces out front of Carney Watson's pharmacy, each with an old black lab or a retriever waiting patiently in the back, waiting for their masters who packed the booths inside, sucking down coffee and rolling dice to see who was going to pay. Typical.
Another day in cow town, boring as hell and no change in sight. Nothing getting better and nothing getting worse. The stories from those guys who returned from the war weren't even enlivening things any longer. They were all talked out and now most of them, having returned to their mothers, fathers, wives and girlfriends, had moved on to find work. It was only rejects like Py who were still here: rejects and guys who came home to family owned spreads, like Frank Walker's, who em
ployed such types.
What to do now: that was the problem. Py got axed without even so much as severance, and given Walker's threats about filing charges he hadn't felt like he was in too good a position to negotiate. Truth was, Walker and his boys scared him. He'd seen what they could do when they wanted to be really mean. They'd almost killed a gypsy harvester last year who got lippy with them over a pay disagreement. Four of them hijacked the guy out of Clancy Webster's Plainsmen Bar and pounded him to a bloody pulp out in a nearby alley. The guy never showed his face on Walker's property again, an acceptance by proxy of the final pay Walker mailed to an address in Oklahoma. The cowboys had a certain way of driving a point home, and the point was you don't argue with Walker Ranch. So Py didn't and now he was broke. And homeless.
Inside of a week Py had lost the only two friends he had in the world. First Jake and now Walt. It was enough to make him suspicious of the whole concept. What good was a feeling that couldn't survive distance? He looked up and down Main Street and it looked like the blues both ways.
Py started walking north, figuring at least he wouldn't appear to be loitering.
Funny thing about the blues: whenever Py was afflicted he noticed that he'd start losing things, misplacing stuff. And always the first thing to go was his self-image. He had an underlying tendency to see himself as an undesirable, associating in his own mind with petty criminals and liars, not that he was either. He would also become certain that this was the impression he gave to people he'd meet. As his paranoia would grow, Py would start avoiding people and the blues would become depression.
Longmont was not too well peopled on a weekday. He glanced through the windows of the Ben Franklin store and saw a grandmother with a child. A skinny, baldheaded man was handing them change but, for some reason, looked up to see Py as he passed by. There was a similar exchange as he went on by the Sears Roebuck, where a group of women stopped talking to look his way when he walked by the storefront windows. Then at the end of the block, right outside of Watson Electric, a little kid came running around the corner and came to a dead stop, freezing to a stare when he saw Py.
What is it? Py wondered. This never happened when he was secure and happy; no one paid any attention at all to him then. But the moment the blues set-in: Bam! Instant notice! It was as if wearing his heart outside his shirt had made him a famous curiosity.
Py was at the north end of the business section, outside the IGA, and about to cross the street and wander back south when the door to the market burst open and out walked a woman who immediately took his attention away from himself. She was of average height, with dark hair down to her shoulders, parted stylishly on the side. And she had big eyes, dark and flashy, that set-off a face too city for the scene. Her clothes said the same. She wore a long, full skirt, a man's shirt and a denim jacket. On her head was a finely crafted flat-brimmed hat, and the entire ensemble made her look like gentry. The way she walked though – that's what really grabbed Py: quick, leading from the hip, and decisive, like she was on a schedule. Py had rarely seen anything like it outside of the movies. She was what Jake had called "a big girl," meaning she wasn't the type to hang around with boys. She carried those groceries like she was advertising dinner.
For a moment Py just stopped in his tracks and stared, slack-jawed. Then he got a grip on himself and became more nonchalant. It was personality slips like that which separated her type from his. Py felt a pressure on his heart and smelled the dark cloud that lowered about his head. No wonder he had the blues. Anybody who couldn’t handle the sight of a beautiful woman without feeling self-pity deserved to be blue.
A black Dodge, streaked with dried mud, rounded the corner and pulled up to the curb directly in the path of Py's dream girl. Before it even came to a stop the driver leaned over and pushed the passenger side door open, a little too early as it turned out.
When the driver hit the brakes the door whipped open wide and then slammed back shut again. He popped it right back open and said something to the girl – inaudible to Py – that made her smile. The driver took her sack of groceries and tossed it with disregard onto the back seat, hugging the woman enthusiastically as she slid in beside him. The two locked together in a long, passionate kiss, which carried enough impact to be noticed by a gaggle of other shoppers who emerged from the IGA just in time to see it.
Py fell back into stupidity, standing beside the car, staring at the couple entwined inside. He was lost in the way her hair looked, her lover's strong, masculine hands squeezing it like messing her up was part of the fun. He was imagining what it must feel like, the way she worked his lips with hers, unabashed in her response to his advance.
And to be with her, like that, in public! Py could hardly breathe. The blues compressed his heart and made him feel light. A big girl. No wonder he'd never known one.
As the man finished his protracted kiss – which Py figured to be open-mouthed, the way it was done by those who knew how – he pulled back and smiled broadly at his girl. And Py couldn't believe what he saw. It was Jake! Jake Jobbs!
Without thinking, Py moved to the passenger-side window of the car. "Jake?" he said. "Jake – is that you?"
Jake struck a grin the moment he saw who it was. "Py, you son of a buck. Imagine goin' to town and runnin' into you. Shouldn't you be out bustin' broncs?"
Py looked from Jake to the girl, then back at Jake. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again, Jake," he said. "I thought sure you was gone a hundred miles from this place already."
Jake glanced at the girl. "Well, Py . . . I was on my way out of town when I met Tory here, and that sort of changed things."
Py settled his hopeless stare on Tory, who thrust her hand forward for Py to shake. "Victoria," she said by way of introduction. "Victoria Parker, but everybody calls me Tory." "Py Mulvane," Py said, reaching dumbly for her hand.
"Me and Py worked together for old man Walker," Jake said. "Yeah sir, we've moved a little hay in our time, ey Py?" Py looked at Tory's hand as if it were porcelain as the two of them shook, leaving all the choreography to her. "You musta got a little time off, huh?" Jake asked.
Py looked at Jake as if he were in a trance, put there by brief contact with the unattainable. Tory recognized the boy's condition and held onto his hand after their greeting was complete. "I don't work for Walker no more, Jake," Py said. "I got fired."
Jake's smile disappeared. "Fired?" he said. "By Walker?"
"Frank Walker his self," Py said, to which Jake asked – "Why?" Py looked both ways down the street, as if afraid that someone might overhear. "Did you hear about Walt?" he asked. "Walt? No," Jake said. "What about him?" "He's dead."
Jake looked momentarily astonished. "No. Old Walt, dead?" He shook his head for a moment. "What happened?"
"It was an accident," Py said. "We was out in that north field, where those big green bales are." "Yeah, I remember." Py continued, "Walt was up on the truck and it was stacked pretty high. You remember how that field's got all those terraces? Well, we started up one and..."
"You were driving?" Jake asked. "Yeah," Py said.
Jake already knew the rest. Py had been driving the one time Jake had been on the back of that hay truck, and he knew how Py handled those terraces. They scared him to death.
"That old truck got to kickin'. You know how it went," to which Jake nodded understandingly. He knew how it went with Py at the wheel. "And before I knew it we lost that load." "Oh God," Jake said. "Did old Walt get under that hay?" "Yeah he did, he got in there and got crushed. Died right on the spot."
Tory continued holding onto the boy's hand as he talked with Jake. He read like a billboard outside a movie house, the whole drama etched in his expression and bold captioned in his eyes. Py was hurt, and she could see it. He made no attempt to free himself from her hold.
"Isn't that somethin’," Jake said, shaking his head. "Poor Walt. He was too damned old to go that way. He should have had better." Jake stopped talking and looked at Py for a moment, grinning sli
ghtly at the boy's obvious fixation on Tory. "So is that why they let you go?" he asked. "Because of old Walt?"
"Yep," Py said, "and Walker told me he might even press charges. I had to go give a statement to the Sheriff this morning."
"Press charges?" Jake said. "What the hell are they gonna press charges on?" "Manslaughter," Py said. "They say I might be responsible. In fact, they told me not to go no place, that there might be a hearing and a trial."
Jake and Tory exchanged looks. "You mean you got no job and you got no choice but to stay in this two-bit town?" Jake asked. "That's right," Py said. "Well, have you got anyplace to hole up? What're you doin' about that?" "No," Py said. "I don't have any money, either. Old Walker wouldn't even give me severance."
Jake glanced again at Tory. "Well where are you goin' now?" he asked. "Nowhere. I was just walkin' up and down Main Street thinkin' about it. I got an aunt lives over in Fort Collins. I ain't seen her in a long time, but I was thinkin' I might get in touch with her. Other'n that, I don't know."
Tory looked at Jake and there was some kind of silent communication, then Jake looked back at Py. "Well get in here," he said. "Open up that door there, Victoria let's see if we can't figure something out for old Py here." Tory opened the door and slid over, making room for Py in front. "Come on," she said, smiling warmly. "Get in."
* * * * *
"So, you say you have relatives over in Fort Collins? Are you from around here then?" Tory mixed her welcoming smile artfully around her words. She had looked at Py and liked him immediately, taking to him as she did to vulnerable beings of all kinds. He seemed clueless and lovable.
Cooksin Page 2
